I don’t know if I can stretch this into a diary of acceptable length. And I hope you will bear with me. Something amazing is happening, and I really want to write about it. In my first diary here, I wrote that I have been largely apolitical for most of my life. Even now, I have friends with whom I have never discussed politics.
In the last 24 hours, two of these friends (who happen to be female) have contacted me to express their concern (translation: disapproval) of Sarah Palin. Maybe you all are used to this, but I am not. My husband gets anti-Obama stuff from some of his high school friends, but even that has slacked off, since I started responding to it! Anyway, I was a little surprised but mostly encouraged to know that women are reaching out to one another at this most critical time.
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One woman wrote to implore me to vote in the PBS poll. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was old news, so I just told her I had voted already and left it at that. I was happy to know that she and I are on the same side in this election. BTW, she lives in Virginia, which is where I vote absentee. I have great hopes for my home state!
The other woman forwarded a piece written by Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues. You can find the full text here on The Huffington Post. I know it’s been diaried before, but I think this part bears repeating:
I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.
Here’s hoping there are many more women out there who are waking up to the danger of the Republican ticket... who are not seduced by the idea of the first woman Vice President. Surely there's a better women to make this mark.